


Pinocchio

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brother Feels, Gen, Imaginary Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 08:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2725337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh Charlie dear, why would you want to leave?"</p><p>"Can't you stay a little closer son? There are dragons just across the channel too." He sighs in exasperation.</p><p>"Guys I know. I know I'm not really yours, I have done for almost two years now and I need to get away."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pinocchio

_When Bill is five (and a half) he’s starting to get a bit lonely because Mum and Dad are always fussing over his new little brother Percy and he doesn’t have anyone to talk to except Charlie._

_Bill adores Charlie of course but sometimes it gets a bit dull playing with someone who can’t really play back. They’ve gotten quite good at chess even if Bill has to repeat everything Charlie says to the pieces._

_Charlie, for his part, quite likes Percy even if Mum and Dad fuss all over him and never leave a moment for Bill, or by default, for him._

_He isn’t even very upset when they let Bill hold the baby and not him. Bill’s upset but Bill’s terribly protective of Charlie._

_The night before Bill’s sixth birthday he and Charlie have a proper sleep-over and in the morning they are woken by Mum’s screaming._

_That’s when it starts._

//

When Charlie is fifteen he accidentally locks Fred and George in the broom-shed and Mum shouts for hours and makes him clean _everything_ in the house and just before school starts he gets to clean the upper attic which hasn’t been cleaned since the house started. (Probably.)

It isn’t hard to get settled into a routine for cleaning up until he finds the baby photos. He grins at the thought of slightly dodgy pictures of his brothers and he could maybe give the twins some of Bill so they’d forgive him.

But the box is a surprise because it seems to be missing some photos. Quite a lot of photos really. Specifically photos of him.

And he panics because suddenly he can’t remember any photos of him before he was four. The first he can remember is at Bill’s sixth birthday where they are both smeared in cake and the chess pieces are finally listening to him direct them. Bill has that picture framed on his sideboard.

Sitting in the dim attic with the ghoul wailing just below him Charlie has a panic attack about his childhood.

He doesn’t remember much of when he was a toddler but suddenly he’s getting flashes of loneliness and small feeling of resent towards his parents and not being able to do or touch anything and Bill is the only one who ever hears him speak.

He remembers their sleep-over and the morning after where Mum hugged him for the first time and he was finally allowed to hold baby Percy and Dad called him son for the first time.

At the very top of the Burrow Charlie Weasley remembers his childhood and more importantly the bit before it.

//

He doesn’t tell anyone he knows. Nothing changes.

For a while he tries to be the perfect son (just in case) until a bludger hits him in the back and he’s fixed as easily as anything and he starts to wonder exactly how real he is.

The slope from popular student and quidditch star with perfect grades to deadbeat who’s always in fights, detentions and the hospital wing is surprising quick.

He’s barely in class and if he is he’ll fall asleep straight away unless it’s Care of Magical Creatures where if anything, he’s doing better.

McGonagall gives him detention and instead sits him down and asks what’s happening and if it’s anything to do with Bill. She’s the first person to directly ask anything and even if she (like half the school) seems to think he’s jealous of the almost-certainty of his brother becoming head-boy he’s still relieved at the chance to talk to someone. He’s crying a little.

He doesn’t say anything.

In the end he files her old files and drips tears over everything and at the end of the two hours he sulks back to Gryffindor tower deeply regretting it all.

At the end of the year he goes to find her and asks if their conversations were private. She said that if he was doing something illegal she’d have to inform his parents and the authorities and if he’s ill she’d have to tell Madam Pomfrey and depending on how serious it was, his parents.

He shivers a little each time she mentions his parents and she adds that if it’s a problem at home his safety is her first concern.

He’s sick all over her desk at the thought and is almost too embarrassed to go on.

In the end he tells her he thinks he’s adopted because it’s the closest he can come to the truth and also easier to say.

He pretends not to see the small quirk of her mouth and reminds her that she said she wouldn’t tell his parents before fleeing out the door.

//

In the end Charlie becomes quidditch captain (to everyone’s surprise) and Bill becomes head-boy (to no-ones).

As far as he can tell McGonagall doesn’t tell Mum and Dad anything and the family as a whole just puts the past year behind them.

Bill leaves with six O’s and an E and the next year he follows with four E’s, a P and an O.

Six months later he tells everyone he’s moving to Romania to work with dragons.

It goes downhill from there.

//

There’s a lot of weeping and shouting from Mum and quiet sadness and worry from Dad and eventually it all comes out in a fight.

"Oh Charlie dear, but why would you want to leave?" Mum wails at him.

"Can't you stay a little closer son? There are dragons just across the channel too." Dad has a sort of twisted grimace on his face.

Charlie sighs in exasperation. "Guys I know. I know I'm not really yours, I have done for almost two years now and I need to get away."

“I know I’m not real.”

He leaves the house, gets spectacularly drunk and the next morning there’s an awkward silence and a lot of heavy looks as he takes the international portkey away from it all.

//

Nothing really changes.

Bill writes letters almost daily and then just weekly as work gets busy. Mum and Dad write around once a month, sometimes more if it’s a special occasion. Percy doesn’t really write but does send sporadic updates about school. Fred and George just don’t write and Ron and Ginny add post-scripts to his parent’s letters.

And Charlie sends almost regular postcards. Sometimes he attaches photos of the dragons or his colleagues and sometimes little trinkets for his siblings. He’s pretty sure Ron and Ginny are the only ones who appreciate it until one day Bill turns up outside his trailer wearing the dragon tooth earring Charlie mostly sent as a gag-gift to rile up Mum.

“We have to talk.”

//

(All of Bill’s letters end in ‘ _You are the realest of us all_.’)

He wants to close the door in his brother’s face but doesn’t. “Come in, then.”

The trailer’s a mess because Charlie’s a slob and his friend who works the evening shift is an even bigger one. Although Charlie has managed to get him to stop leaving cigarette butts in broken dragon eggs.

It isn’t magically enlarged in any way supposedly because if a dragon got out it could get set on fire and the magic would react badly. In reality it was mostly because they didn’t spend much time in them and were mostly too tired to change anything. This meant that Bill and Charlie had to sit curled on the bottom bunk just like when they were little.

“You were always real. It’s just that everyone else was too stupid to notice.”

“Do you ever wonder who else you might have made up?” He tries not to be too angry.

“No. I’ve never wanted anyone else to be seen.” Bill was being irritatingly calm and patient with him.

“Or that you’d get angry and I’d disappear?”

Bill stills and Charlie can tell what he’s going to say before he does.

“Yeah, yeah, that I’ve wondered. I’ve had nightmares where you were never there or where no one else could see you again. But I’ve had the same nightmares about everyone else as well. It’s nothing to do with whether or not you were fucked into existence.”

Charlie sucked in a breath and asked a question that bothered him more than the previous two put together. He was selfish. “Have you ever wished I was different and then I changed?”

“Char I’ve only ever wished two things of you. That everyone else could see you and that you’d start talking to us again.”

Surprisingly Charlie felt a small shoot of disappointment. “So you made me tailored to you.”

“No! For Merlin’s sake Charlie! I was a kid and I wanted a brother, I got a brother and some people didn’t notice.” He was breathing heavily now.

“It’s old magic; once you give something a name it becomes real. Everyone knows that.”

There was a long pause. Charlie closed his eyes and whispered, “Can you wish me away?”

“No.” Bill sounded calm again; completely exhausted of anger. “I’d do anything for you Char but I couldn’t honestly wish that.”

“I just want to know I’m real.” He was crying again; for the first time since that detention with McGonagall.

“Do you breathe? Think? Eat? Bleed? Do you love?”

Charlie nodded tiredly.

“Then you’re real.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hate writing endings. If it isn't ambiguous I generally can't do it. I might start writing everything in script format so I can go *fade to black* or *final bow*


End file.
